Ephemeron Vs. Stuff

More Coming of Aging. Being Seen. Songs

Once I had a roommate in LA, an actor, who got work but was also in different acting classes all the time. He told me about an exercise one of the classes held for the acting students: they were to pick a partner, and go to the airport. They’d take turns being the subject. The subject would engage in various things—sitting at the gate, browsing the gift shop, walking by, order a drink—whatever they could manage I suppose. The partner then had to approach a stranger, ask them if they’d help with a class assignment, and instruct the stranger to observe the “subject” and tell the partner what they noticed, what stood out, what impression the subject person made. They were meant to do this several times with different people observing the subject, then switch roles.

The idea, I believe, was to inform the actor subject about how they are viewed. Obviously, a big part of the job for an actor is being viewed—so it would follow that it might be helpful to learn from different strangers with no knowledge of who they are observing—what they see. Maybe there’s something that would be helpful to the actor, something to “lean into” that makes them stand out from the other hopefuls. Maybe something they need to work on getting rid of. Not all twitches are created equal. And resting bitch face, or resting any face other than what the scene calls for could be an issue.

Apart from the sheer horror of having to approach strangers, and then ask them to do something so potentially awkwardly uncomfortable—although I’m sure there are many, many humans that would love to kill a few moments at the airport in this way—the idea of the exercise was so intriguing and interesting to me that I never forgot about it.

As I inhabit further this coming of aging space; more and more I see it as a fascinating time, in that the way I feel inside doesn’t necessarily match my exterior. At what other point in life is there such a discrepancy? Toddlers, children, teens, young adults, middle aged—we pretty much feel like each of those when we’re there. But as soon as you enter seniorland, nah. Maybe you cross over in your 80’s and start feeling like an old, but nearly all the elders I’ve read or heard comment on aging—even some quite up there—tend to say they feel as they did when they were younger, despite how they might appear.

There’s no way I’ll be asking a friend to do the exercise with me at an airport or anywhere else, but I do wonder: what would a stranger notice about me, what do they see?

I’ve cultivated some things I want the world to see. Adapting preferences can absolutely be done at any age. I have resting small-smile face, I make eye contact and smile at people. I’m mindful of posture, and have awareness of how I walk and wish to enter a room. But there are things, I am sure, that go beyond what we consciously do. Vibe, impression, mannerisms. Some people, you can tell, are tightly wound, some are chill. Some have an abundance of nervous energy, can’t stop moving. Some pick, bite, fiddle and fidget, some are very still. Would you be interested to know what a stranger sees when they observe you?

Speaking of airports and observing people, one of my favorite dispatches involves doing that very thing. This is Decomposure and Crotches, my 20th, published in April 2023.

I might just have to compile a “best of” the Direction of Motion.

Speaking of this substack, I welcome and thank you new subscribers—you’ve helped me reach a new milestone on the platform. I started writing “The Direction of Motion” in Nov, 2022, so I’m approaching three years of consistent and regular writing for a readership that has grown very slowly. I’m not making a living off it like many Substackers have managed to do, but it has helped my situation considerably to get Substack subscriber financial support. I welcome gratefully your participation.

In the beginning, that November, I’d lost Tux my dog (dispatch #2,) a few months after losing my mom, and was here in the UK on a sort of test run. In my aunt’s guest room one evening, I wrote my first substack post. I didn’t want it to be a public journal chronicling my comings and goings and doings. Sometimes the life stuff overtakes my literary aspirations or my creative ideas, but it’s not a default. A few readers signed on in the early months and joined me in the process of creating a song, (which remains unfinished!) and went down my rabbit holes about everything from my love of word origins via the Etymological Garden, to history; Chopin, George Sand, (Etudes In Writing)… the Romantics—writers and poets, not the band—Boudicca, to wolf pee and travel and shows and can I just say I’ve enjoyed every single bit of doing this and am so so damn grateful and also really proud.

It starts getting dark about 4pm now. I think it should have zero effect on me but I’m probably wrong and it probably does. London has also entered the “days can go by without ever seeing the sun” time, and this I know has an effect. A friend said maybe I have SAD which apparently is “seasonal affected disorder” but when I looked up what it is, that didn’t sound like me. I do feel tired a lot. Like a lot. And inclined to homebody more than go out, but the SAD depression and anxiety seem like stronger descriptors than what I have.

It’ll pass, like everything does. Ephemeral, transient. Also, ephemeron. Who knew there was a noun version? Ephemeron as a noun is my latest favorite word. (Greek, from epi; meaning “on” or “for” and hemera; “day”)

Speaking of things that don’t last…by chance I landed on the text chat of me and my last ex-bf. I was searching for someone or something else and found instead a Whats App thread from 2016. A little mind blowing that it was nearly ten years ago. I fell into reading the entire chat and was laughing out loud at us. We were very funny together.

It was a five-year long-distance relationship and was my first post-divorce person. Seven years after splitting up until I met someone new. When I finally did, I thought it was special. And it was special, until it wasn’t. But in the years since that break up—a bit of a covid casualty, but ultimately for the best—I had forgotten the long distance texty repartee that took place, I had forgotten the longing of being separated, the newness of being in love again.

It wasn’t exactly sad, but it was that awful bittersweet nostalgia of a very happy time. Not only the romance, but to relive a 2016 summer trip with Audrey to St Albans, London, and Marbella, Spain, via text bubbles describing beaches and dinners, walks, shows, strange encounters. Text chats are an amazing chronicle of the past in their random specificity.

A month after Clem died I read as far back as I could go, all our texts. It’s like a conversation that can happen again and again. How can something be so present and so over at the same time? Ephemeron.

In Defense of Stuff

Not long ago I hit a ramp and floored it in a clearing out mania that was partly, mainly practical; I was moving to another country. But also sort of, maybe cultural? We get older and are supposed to downsize, reduce. Marie Kondo-ize our lives, Swedish death clean sweeps. Yes that’s a real thing. I got rid of lots. I gave, I sold, I repurposed, I guiltily land-filled. Just two months ago, I did another round in Austin. The result of all that energy and time is that I now have a houseful of new stuff in London. And a storage room of the kept old stuff still in Austin. And a completely furnished house, with dishes, pots, pans, linens, plants and books that I rent out. Not a flex, btw.

The past couple of weekends I was trawling through these fantastic London flea markets. Yeah, I bought some stuff. Nothing I needed, but good deals that made my home more pleasing. I tried to feel ridiculous and shallow and berate myself over it, but I just couldn’t. I was happy with what I bought, and I’m happy with what I have, in all the places I have it. What a realization. Guess what Marie, it ALL brings me joy.

You know what’s cool about stuff? It’s not ephemeral. The humans come and go, the (good) stuff goes to vintage stores and flea markets. My stuff is a reflection, an expression of me and my life. My stuff, along with my work—my songs, my words, my writing, will be here after I’m gone. Maybe accumulating things—with balance and occasional culling, is okay, at any age, if that’s the kind of person I am. Apparently so.

This is a poem from my favorite poet, the wonderfully astute Nobel Prize winning Wislawa Symborska. I think it sums up stuff beautifully.

MUSEUM by Wislawa Szymborska

Here are plates with no appetite.
And wedding rings, but the requited love
has been gone now for some three hundred years.

Here’s a fan–where is the maiden’s blush?
Here are swords–where is the ire?
Nor will the lute sound at the twilight hour.

Since eternity was out of stock,
ten thousand aging things have been amassed instead.
The moss-grown guard in golden slumber
props his mustache on Exhibit Number…

Eight. Metals, clay and feathers celebrate
their silent triumphs over dates.
Only some Egyptian flapper’s silly hairpin giggles.

The crown has outlasted the head.
The hand has lost out to the glove.
The right shoe has defeated the foot.

As for me, I am still alive, you see.
The battle with my dress still rages on.
It struggles, foolish thing, so stubbornly!
Determined to keep living when I’m gone!

I’ll leave you with a couple of bits of songs I’ve been writing with my Psycher bandmate Brix Smith. These are rough demos I did in ProTools that help get all the ideas for parts down. I’m playing pretty much all the parts, including bass and ripping solos. Both Brix and I are doing vocals. It saves money in the studio if we already know what works. Plus it’s fun, I can do this for hours on end once I get started.

Hoping to make full band recordings in January. So these are ephemerons, here today, replaced soon. We already have four done and will write a few more before then, and it will be eight! Inching our way to public consumption.

“Sting Ray” and “Smile” snippets.